Monday, 22 June 2009

This forms part of Tango's ongoing efforts to re-establish the Tango brand in the UK. Last year the 'Save Tango' campaign was launched, with a typically 'Tangoesque' voice - all captured in the website at www.savetango.co.uk.

Save Tango website - another brand saying 'Thank You'

The Save Tango campaign harnessed social areas such as YouTube, Facebook etc, but the upside down can derives from activity that followed on the Bragster.com website.

Bragster is a social site where members can dare other members to do things - with the resulting proof posted onto the Bragster site. Tango joined the Bragster community, posting various Tango related dares, but in return the Bragster community dared Tango to produce an upside down can with a Bragster name check.

Tango on Bragster

Tango have honoured this dare and have printed 2.5m cans with upside down logos and Bragster name check (as seen on my image at the top of this post.) The proof of the dare acceptance was posted as a video on Bragster with people visiting the Tango canning plant to see the upside down Tango cans being produced:

The Bragster community then embraced this initiative hitting the streets with Tango to promote upside down-ness. Men in orange swimming trunks and women in orange bikinis then posed upside down across London to promote Upside Down Tango - appearing at St.Pauls cathedral, the Tate Modern, Tower Bridge and a London tube train:

Tango / Bragster upside down stunt on London tube train

The full 'turning London upside down with TANGO' video:

This activity has gained 23,528 positive votes from Bragster members, but also appeared extensively in mainstream media, for example the Sun here. However, rather than just creating a stunt to fuel the social conversation (like Peugeot or Lotus), Tango have embraced the Bragster community throughout the process - thus rather than a random stunt, the whole concept of upside down Tango (from product design through to promotion) has involved social community throughout.

Tango upside down cans are a great example of Listening to social sites, reaching out to / participating in a receptive venue, engaging with influencers in that space and then using social insight / community activity through the marketing process.

More proof that to get the most out of social marketing it has to be integrated across the whole marketing mix rather than just added into the strategy as a media channel - social marketing is more than just a banner on MySpace or creating a Facebook Fan Page!

3 comments:

This is probably my favourite example to date of a brand getting it right when it comes to Social Media. They went to where the public was, they interacted with the public, they listen to the public, and then they did what they were asked. In this single act they have shown that they are willing to actually go beyond the normal and become everything that their brand has said it was. So many other brands could learn from this!

I think the most interesting thing with this example is that there is very little 'media' involved. It's all about 'social thinking' rather than 'social media' and as you say, they have integrated social across the whole process, living up to brand promise along the way. Lots of attention from limited outlay - interested to see the results.....